ACLU asks federal court to block Trump's second birthright citizenship order

Today’s Focus

The American Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs asked a federal court on Tuesday to block President Donald Trump’s newest executive order restricting birthright citizenship, saying it is an attempt to sidestep a Supreme Court decision issued six weeks earlier.

The Guardian reported that the Tuesday filing describes Trump’s revised order, signed last week, as an “improper attempt to evade” the June 30 ruling in Trump v. Barbara, which struck down his original Day One order denying automatic citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders.

The filing tells the court that “the president continues to claim for himself the power to identify categories of children whose citizenship he intends to deny,” according to The Guardian.

The legal challenges are unfolding in two existing cases. Reason’s Volokh Conspiracy reported that plaintiffs in Barbara v. Trump are asking the court to modify the existing injunction or issue a new one, while plaintiffs in CASA, Inc. v. Trump have asked a court to lift a stay and hold a status conference on the new order.

Both cases involve certified classes of children born in the United States to parents who are undocumented or in the country on temporary visas.

A White House spokesperson told The Guardian that “the Trump administration has always followed court orders” and that recent actions are “consistent with the holdings and analysis set forth by the court.”

Trump has made ending automatic citizenship for the U.S.-born children of certain non-citizens a signature immigration goal since his first day back in office. The Guardian noted he has publicly criticized the Supreme Court since the June ruling.

The new order has not yet been enforced against any class member, and no federal agency has begun denying citizenship documents under it.

The Debate

Supporters argue

The White House says the revised order was written to comply with the Supreme Court’s June opinion, not to defy it. In a statement to The Guardian, a spokesperson said all actions “since the recent supreme court rulings are consistent with the holdings and analysis” of the court.

Administration allies argue that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause has never been definitively interpreted to cover every child born on U.S. soil regardless of parental status. They point to the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” as leaving room for executive interpretation.

Trump and his advisers have long framed birthright citizenship as an incentive for illegal immigration. In prior public remarks compiled by The Guardian, Trump has called ending the practice central to his second-term immigration agenda.

Supporters also contend that the president has broad authority to instruct federal agencies on how to interpret ambiguous statutes governing passports and citizenship documentation, and that any narrower order tailored to the court’s ruling should be given a chance to be litigated on its own terms rather than blocked preemptively.

Critics argue

The ACLU filing argues the new order is functionally the same as the one the Supreme Court rejected. “The government may not strip away class members’ citizenship through any executive orders or other similarly flawed assertions of executive power,” the plaintiffs wrote, according to The Guardian.

Reason contributor Ilya Somin, writing at the Volokh Conspiracy, called “the vast bulk” of the new order unconstitutional under Trump v. Barbara.

Critics say the pattern of reissuing a modified order after a loss reflects an attempt to exhaust plaintiffs and courts rather than accept the ruling. They note that class actions like Barbara and CASA were certified in part because the Supreme Court restricted universal injunctions, forcing case-by-case litigation.

Immigrant rights groups warn that even unenforced orders create uncertainty for hospitals, passport offices, and families of newborns, and that the delay between issuance and adjudication is itself the harm.

What the experts say

The 14th Amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.” The Supreme Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark held that a child born on U.S. soil to non-citizen parents was a citizen at birth, a reading the Congressional Research Service has repeatedly cited as the governing precedent.

Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia who studies citizenship, has written that executive action alone cannot redefine who qualifies as a citizen under the amendment.

The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group, has estimated that ending automatic citizenship for children of unauthorized immigrants would, over time, create a large stateless-in-practice population inside the United States. A 2010 MPI analysis projected that the unauthorized population could grow by roughly 4.7 million by 2050 under such a policy.

The June ruling in Trump v. Barbara did not decide the merits of every possible reformulation, leaving room for the current litigation over the revised order.

By the Numbers

June 30, 2026: date the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Barbara that Trump’s original birthright order violated the 14th Amendment, according to The Guardian.

2: number of pending federal cases, Barbara v. Trump and CASA, Inc. v. Trump, in which plaintiffs have moved against the new order, according to Reason.

1898: year the Supreme Court decided United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the foundational birthright citizenship precedent, per the Congressional Research Service.

14th: constitutional amendment whose citizenship clause is at the center of the dispute.

4.7 million: Migration Policy Institute’s 2010 projected growth in the unauthorized U.S. population by 2050 if birthright citizenship were curtailed.

$20 million: separate amount ICE plans to spend on electric-shock gloves for officers by March, part of the broader immigration enforcement buildup, according to The Guardian.